The new extremism unleashes all the forces of brutal self-absorption that deepen and expand both the structure of cruelty and its ongoing privatization. Material self-interests have weakened any sense of collective purpose, just as America's obsession with radical individualism and wealth and the growing existence of gross inequality have become symptomatic of our ethical and collective impoverishment.
Still, it can't help but seem slightly paradoxical to describe an "every man for himself" ethic as "authoritarian." However, the state doesn't exactly disappear in Giroux's dystopia. Instead of the nurturing, regulating state he idealizes, it becomes a "punishing state" more likely to use force against the poor or anyone who challenges the reigning ideology through acts of solidarity or resistance. And you can bet, if you believe this scenario, that those dissidents will be the ones accused of authoritarian if not totalitarian tendencies, because they'll be presumed worshipers of an all-powerful state and haters of freedom.
Republicans themselves, since the 1980s, have insisted on a distinction between "authoritarian" and "totalitarian" forms of tyranny. According to the theorist of this distinction, the late Jeanne Kirkpatrick, authoritarian regimes might be deplorable in practice but were more acceptable on principle than totalitarian states. This is because authoritarian states, generally speaking, allowed more economic freedom than totalitarian states. Ideally, that allowed for the formation of a "civil society" that would inevitably claim political freedoms, while totalitarian states were presumed irreconcilably hostile to both economic freedom and civil society. By Republican standards, then, Giroux may be on to something when he observes a slide toward authoritarianism in the U.S. We might ask, however, whether the essence of "totalitarianism," if you grant any essence to the concept, is its hostility to economic freedom or its hostility to civil society. If civil society itself begins to question unconditional economic freedom, and a society dogmatically committed to economic liberty above all other values resolves to crush all challenges, whether through cultural propaganda, social engineering or other means, wouldn't the country in question have a totalitarian tendency, too? How's that for a paradox?
3 comments:
The paradox, to me, is that in order to ensure the Constitutional freedoms we have, we need a strong state. A strong state can defend itself against corruption from without as well as within. Yet these people want a weak state because they claim a strong state impedes their "freedom".
Given the many conversations I've had and comments I've read, their idea of freedom seems to be the "right" to act in any manner they wish, with impunity, no sense of responsibility or limits, regardless of what harm those actions may bring on to others.
This is not freedom. It is irrational and ignorant. One cannot have a society without rules, limits and boundaries.
If these animals can't live peacefully within the limitations necessary to a peaceful and prosperous society, then they should have the decency to go live with the rest of the animals, in the wilderness, where they belong. Without the benefits of a modern civilized culture.
Obviously, though, no one thinks there should be no such thing as "crime," so everyone accepts that lines can and should be drawn. The debate is usually over where the lines are drawn, and the issue is whether the people -- the body politic -- can draw the lines and define "crime" where they will, or whether some overriding principle of individual freedom should constrain them, on the assumption that individual freedom is the primary object of collective endeavor. It should be possible to mark a point beyond which limits to individual conduct become oppressive and insist that limits short of that point are not oppressive, no matter what dissidents think or feel. You'll probably always have someone who finds some restriction or regulation oppressive, but whether feeling that way proves the charge isn't for the individual alone to determine.
Individual freedom? What is that? The fact of the matter is, since the state holds the only "legitimate" monopoly on violence, the state gets to decide what freedom any individual has. There is no overriding principle because there is no higher authority to appeal to.
In my opinion, the individual should be able to do whatever they wish to do, providing their actions do not infringe on any other individual. I also believe that if an individual's actions cause problems for others, they should not whine about any reprisals which come their way.
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